West Hollywood Has Third-Highest Percentage of Gay Couples in State, Census Analysis Shows

As an openly gay newcomer to West Hollywood in the mid-1970s, Peter Redgrove found an area that was a nucleus for gay people to meet and form relationships, where violence toward gays was an aberration rather than the rule.

“It was a place you could actually walk around and hold hands and hug each other,” Redgrove said Wednesday afternoon, sitting at a table at  with his husband, Elliott Michelsen.

What started out as safety in numbers has become a full-fledged community of tolerance. The city of West Hollywood today contains the third-highest percentage of gay couples in the state, according to a recent analysis of 2010 census data from the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law. 

With about 66 gay couples per 1,000 households, West Hollywood is behind only Palm Springs and Guerneville in Northern California, according to the study. 

The city was similarly ranked both statewide and nationally in the 2000 census, and Gary Gates, Williams Institute senior research fellow and co-author of the analysis, said he expects it will again.

“[The data] does give an indication about where there are high concentrations of gay people,” Gates said. “I don’t think there is any surprise that that includes West Hollywood.”

But West Hollywood Mayor John Duran said he was a bit taken aback by the findings. Housing options in the area generally classify as apartments or condominiums rather than single-family homes, he said. 

“I really thought we were more of a community of LGBT singles, because of the nightlife and our housing stock,” Duran said.

The report defines a “couple” as one person describing his or her relationship with the other person as “husband/wife” or “unmarried partner.” Data were adjusted for both procedural error and the chance that gay couples are underreported due to concerns about confidentiality.

The census findings also surprised Michelsen. Couples tend to leave the area in their mid-30s and early 40s, either to start families or put down roots, he said. He and Redgrove, who have been together for 12 years and married since 2008, are currently planning a move to Sacramento.

Michelsen also pointed to a growing emphasis on families in the city, though only about 20 percent of gay couples in the state are raising children, according to the Williams Institute analysis. That leaves a small slice for West Hollywood, about 6 percent, Gates said.

In Michelsen's view, though, the focal point is changing. "You see a lot more strollers now than drag queens," he said. 

Either way, West Hollywood has long fostered a culture of people outside the mainstream of society, Duran said. For decades, the Los Angeles Police Department did not have jurisdiction in the area, which fell solely under county lines.

That created the prime conditions for a flourishing counterculture, Duran said. The demographic transitioned into communists, socialists and homosexuals in the middle of the century, he said. 

Sharing the perception that they would be sheltered from police interference or harassment, the region initially attracted mobsters and “rum-runners”—the likes of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack.

“Yes, it’s an LGBT mecca, but it’s just one of the flavors in the mix,” Duran said.